All Roads Lead to Despair
by Mary Allen
Summary: With dubious help from Jack, Sam sets out to Apocalypse World to save his mother. Everything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Sam ends up dead, in Hell, alone with Lucifer who just can t seem to give him a break. Relentless onslaught of psychological horror Sam torture. Hurt no comfort. Not for the faint of heart. You know you want it.
1. Chapter 1 - Prologue: The First Steps

**I´m back with another translation, you know the drill by now.**

 **Disclaimer: Supernatural belongs to Eric Kripke. This original work belongs to Viviana Stellata from Wattpad and I am translating her story with permission.** ****

 **Enjoy, you vultures. We´re brothers and sisters in this adventure.**

 **xXx** ****

 **Chapter 1 – Prologue: The First Step**

Dawn was breaking. The house by the lake was ablaze.

Wisps of pungent smother from the fire were slowly mingling with the fog languidly rolling above the dark water surface. The flames were lashing out high against the sky, outshining the beauty of the early daybreak.

The fire appeared in the children´s room first, right after a short light show not connected to the flames just yet. It grew rapidly, consumed the planks covering the window and burst right out with a wild crackle. Engulfed the wallpapers covered with dozens of complex symbols and sigils. Spread through the house with staggering speed, swallowed the roof, gnawed on furniture and spilled across the linoleum floors. The papers on the kitchen table went up in flames, blackened, and disintegrated into ash. A nearby laptop was dripping down into a plastic puddle in the raging inferno.

It was a wooden house, and yet the flames seized it in suspiciously short amount of time. The fire couldn´t be spreading faster even if someone covered the entire building in gasoline. Which indeed wasn´t the case, and the subsequent investigation wouldn´t find traces of any burning catalyst.

Only a residue of sulfur in the vicinity of the fire site, insufficient for a legitimate explanation.

The sole person who could provide any information regarding the whole thing disappeared in the dark amidst the trees, just as the foundations of the house gave out.

A figure, resembling a human only at first sight.

A son of a mortal woman and a fallen archangel.

Jack.

 **** **xXx** ****

 **A** **n hour earlier**

"Not to be a drama queen, but if you´re reading this, it means..."

Sam gaped at the unfinished sentence and tapped the tip of the pen against his left palm. For a few minutes now.

 _Come on, it can´t be that hard to put together one dumb note_.

He frowned, quickly glanced to the door of the children´s room and begun to write. Again, on a new sheet of paper.

"Dean, if you´re reading this, it means..."

 _Dammit, what exactly does it mean?_

A new sheet, a new beginning.

"I know you went out to find a way to bring Cas back. You´re not as cryptic as you think you are, Dean. And I couldn´t just sit here and wait, not when I finally managed to get something out of Jack. If you´re reading this, then this was my mistake and my failure. But I believe..."

He imagined Dean´s skeptical expression. _"Seriously? You believe this damned thing? And I´m the one who´s going nuts? You gotta be kidding me."_

He crossed out the beginning of the last sentence and started again differently. He was intent on finishing this attempt, content with it or not.

"...mistake and my failure. But I have to try. I´m not relying only on Jack´s strength. And no, I don´t trust him, I took precautions so that he can´t lie to me. I started out from a Sumerian ritual and combined it with more modern methods, the whole file is in my laptop in a folder called Blood Bond. In short: working with Jack was a lot like working with a ouija board, but I can´t ignore the outcome. Apparently mom is still alive in that other dimension and with what I got together and with Jack´s help, I should be able to get her out of there.

Anyhow, if that blows up in my face..."

He wasn´t sure if he even needed to write that sentence. It felt as if he would be placing a _´no littering´_ sign right in front of a long-standing and frequently-used illegal waste dump.

"...if it blows up in my face," he wrote in the end, "please, don´t try to repeat the ritual. If I get stuck there, I have to make it back alone. You´ll have your hands full here with Jack. Because in that case, it´ll be up to you to eliminate him. Which could at least make you a bit happy. Everything I found out about him is saved in a folder right next – Insurance. And of course I backed the data up on Cloud. You have the access.

I´m sorry Dean, I know I should´ve waited for you.

I hope you´ll have the opportunity to rub that in my face personally after you come back. After I´ll be waiting here for you with mom, instead of a stupid note."

He hesitated. Then he added his signature and weighted the paper down to the middle of the kitchen table with a salt shaker.

Although he could dispose of the message same as he did with the previous versions, Sam had a feeling that by sealing his decision like this, he couldn´t back out anymore.

Maybe because, the ritual itself aside, this message for Dean represented the only thing that was left to do before it started.

He stood up, rubbed his hands.

"Alright, let´s do this," he mumbled to himself and set off to the door of the children´s room.

 **xXx**

Spending time in Jack´s presence was like having a picnic next to a molten core of a nuclear reactor.

It was also a matter Sam didn´t discuss with his older brother yet. Being near Lucifer´s son probably affected both of them – vertigo, nausea, buzzing in their ears, blurry vision. But it appeared that Dean blamed the symptoms to his own hate and disgust; in short he refused to spend more time than absolutely necessary in the presence of the nephilim.

Sam didn´t feel the need to explain that felt the same. Each second of the long hours he spent with Jack. He could do the math, if he told Dean, he´d insist they solve the problem. But Sam also had a clear idea of what kind of solution Dean would propose.

Either way, he could take a rest in this matter now. Of course, even if the plan succeeds – no, _once_ it succeeds – the question of what to do with Jack will remain. But the tens of minutes counting down to the dawn, the magical divide between night and day, they will be the last minutes when Sam has to handle the devil´s offspring by himself.

 _Don´t rush anything now..._

As an appetizer before the unpalatable main course remained an arduous, repetitive slog.

For what was perhaps the hundredth time, he had to go through all the safety measures, check the concord of the protective sigils, make sure not even a cranny was left, no hypothetical icebergs hidden under the surface, no ploy leading to failure.

And only then, to repeat the process of questions and answers. And to carry out the ritual.

 **xXx**

He planned this moment down to the last detail. During dreamless nights and gloomy days, where only the thought of a rescue mission provided him with with an escape from the stifling atmosphere of sadness and despair.

And yet Sam hesitated for a second outside of the children´s room´s door, before he pressed the handle.

The nasty impact on the physical aside, staying inside had one more unwelcome aspect. Sam wasn´t sure if Dean even perceived it – his brother only ever displayed hatred and repulsion, if he sensed anything else, he didn´t show it.

Fear was rising out of Jack like an invisible fluidum.

An animalistic, primal instinct. The feeling of an animal in the presence of a predator.

 _Flee. Defend._

This time, when Sam entered this repeating nightmare, the subconscious horror melted into a combination of both: the urge to get this over with as soon as possible.

He entered with suppressed impatience.

 **xXx**

He welcomes him as usual. With a derisive sneer on his inhuman face.

 _This is the last time. Whatever comes out of this, this is the last time, get your act together..._

Everything is ready. Thirty minutes till sunrise. Sam breaths in deeply and slowly breathes out, everything inside him is rebelling. He´s overcoming his instincts and natural defense mechanisms with pure rationality. He´s calming down.

He goes through the basic enchantments. Questions and answers, new confirmation of the same agreement. When they finally move on to something more substantial, Sam´s forehead is sparkling with sweat.

"Mary Winchester, my mother, is alive and is herself."

A well-known whisper answers him. Jack´s voice sounds as if it was coming out of cold depths, a cave in the mountains, desolate... A stray echo: "Yes."

"The prize for opening the gate to her is my blood."

"Yes."

"Nothing more."

"Nothing more."

Sam closes his eyes.

 _Concentrate. You´re almost there._

"Both of us will be able to pass through it on our way back," he says and his throat is constricting. Not out of mere nausea. Out of longing and sadness.

"Yes."

"Without further conditions. Without further consequences."

The nephilim tilts his head slightly to the side and repeats the two sentences in a voice uncomfortably similar to Sam´s own.

And as always when he does this – it appears he´s really beginning to enjoy these provocations – Sam is seized by doubt.

He can´t lie. He simply can´t. I made sure with every conceivable way.

But what if it´s not enough?

"Is... is this a mistake?" He mumbles. He opens his eyes – Jack is sitting calmly in multiple circles of symbols and sigils meant to keep him in place, under control. His grimace remains unchanging as well, cruel and bemused, as if he was finding humor hidden for everyone else in this predicament.

"A mistake," he repeats instead of answering. "Is this a mistake?"

 _Shit..._

Sam keeps calm only with the force of his will.

 _Dammit, I should know by now that this leads nowhere_.

He has no idea whether Jack actually isn´t able to answer more abstract questions, whether he isn´t able to communicate beyond yes and no, or if it´s just pure malevolence on his part. Sam doesn´t know, and he definitely can´t occupy himself with that right now. 

Daybreak is drawing near.

He needs to go through the remaining questions, less important. And Sam does that, he´s concentrated, trying to break away from all the disruptive emotions. A question after question, until he arrives to the last one. The one that feels the most essential and at the same time makes him doubt if this whole thing is a good idea.

He has to ask it. And get the correct answer.

 _We created a colossal pile of mess in our attempts to save one another. I don´t want to add on to that pile. No matter what._

"You´ll immediately close the tear if Lucifer appears," he proclaims and forces himself to look into Jack´s eyes. He continues, meticulously adhering to the procedures from the original rituals. "No matter what, under all circumstances, you shall not allow Lucifer to return back to this world, you shall close the road for the fallen archangel."

"I shall close the road," the nephilim whispers.

"Whether you call him Lightbringer or Devil, Morning Star or Satan, you shall close the road for him."

"Yes."

In this moment, Sam has the last opportunity to back away. To stand up, leave and leave the dawn to be. Wait for Dean. And try again, with more insurance...

But when it comes down to it, not even an entire army would make a difference. The rules were clear, he himself set them up.

"Doubts," the whisper sounds again, freezing every cell in his body. The word that is neither _yes_ nor _no_ surprises Sam, but doesn´t stop him.

"No. The deal stands," he replies and clenches his teeth.

Don´t drag it out.

The last seconds dash by way too fast.

A brief stroke with a blade. Hot blood fills the palm. Jack is watching, seemingly calm, but Sam feels as if the air itself started vibrating with avidity.

Yet he doesn´t hesitate. He stretches out his hand over the areas of protection.

The nephilim is gulping down the crimson liquid, scooping it up with his tongue, like a thirsty dog.

The darkness outside is diluted by the daybreak, at the same time, a shiny gold line cuts through the fabric of reality in the children´s room, glimmering and shining behind Sam´s back.

Sam doesn´t wait, the time of hesitation long gone. He pulls back his bleeding hand, stands up; in a single step he covers the distance between two dimensions.

A notional border between a familiar world and a realm of utter madness.

 __ **xXx** __

 _Don´t create assumptions. Expect literally anything._

During his preparations, Sam kept endlessly repeating these two sentences. Fully knowing, that even if he did strictly abide by them, still the place where he would appear, could catch him off guard. He still thought this could help him stay on guard and act fast.

But no matter how he tried to rationalize it, he couldn´t avoid the simple human need to imagine the future. And to assume. He stepped into the unknown with a conception of something terrifying; darkness, destruction, chaos. Going by what little he knew about this other dimension, it was supposed to be some kind of post-apocalyptic war inferno.

With a raging Lucifer thrown into the mix.

So when Sam appeared on the other side of the tear, all the preparation in the world didn´t stop him from doing an incredulous double take.

He expected literally anything.

 _Alright, but... normalcy?_

He wasn´t exactly standing on a meadow filled with flowers and butterflies, in his world, this place couldn´t exactly compete for the front ranks of the world´s most popular holidays destinations. But in this lost, ravaged reality... actually it more reminded him of Crowley´s version of Hell as an endless queue.

Or a scene from a cheap horror set in a psychiatric hospital.

Padded cell. The walls, the ceiling, the floor and even the sturdy door painted in hospital green. A blinking headlight with the necessary dead flies under the plastic case, protected by a tarnished grating. The dark brown stains of dried blood on the walls and floor gave a disquieting impression, but at the same time, it was as if even those resembled a decoration, a propriety the designer deemed essential.

A mental hospital. In a world ravaged by a war between Heaven and Hell where humanity fell down to the level of game animals. _Really?_

More like an institution that is now being used by someone for something entirely else than it was originally intended for.

Before Sam scanned though the cell and arrived to this thought, barely few seconds have passed. He shook his head, chased out the questions which were pointless at this moment. Out of the corner of his eye, he checked the tear behind his back and focused on the important matters, the reason he came here.

The sleeping woman in the filthy hospital gown, huddled in a corner of the cell.

Mary.

"Mom." Although he felt the need to rush and not waste a single moment, he couldn´t make himself to shake his mother awake. He merely lightly grabbed her by the shoulder. "Wake up. Hey... mom!"

She didn´t even stir, just her pale, cracked lips moved, she whispered something. Her eyelids were fluttering.

Only now, Sam noticed the details he missed before with trepidation: dry, ghastly pale skin, lank hair glued together into pitiable wisps, dark circles under her eyes... and broken nails on her hands with bloody grazes. Stains of who-knows-what on her clothes.

"Wake up, we need to get out of here. Mom!"

He shook her with more force. This time she flinched and her eyes opened a bit. For a while she tried to focus her gaze, alternating between Sam and the door with the window made out of thick and dirty glass.

"Sam?" She stuttered out at last. "Yo-you´re not here. Not for real." With dazed movement, she scrambled up into a sitting position and pressed her back to the wall. She closed her eyes again.

"It´s just in my... just in the head, yeah," she rasped. "Still the same."

 _She´s alive_ , Sam thought bitterly, _okay, that fits. But what about being herself? Does that hold true when she´s chock-full of god-knows-which crap?_

"Mom," he tried once more, not trying to hide the impatience in his voice this time. "I´ll get you out of here, okay? But you have to try focus on me."

She tried, and that was the most tormenting thing in this entire situation, she tried with all her strength to force her way out of the drug-induced fog. She nodded wearily, tried to look at him again, but her gaze was slipping sideways.

"Sammy, you shouldn´t have... Will we go away?"

"Yeah," he breathed out in relief, "we´ll get out of here."

He was ready to simply snatch her and drag her to the dimensional rift.

"I don´t know..." she whispered and dryly swallowed. "I don´t know if this is... I can´t think!"

"We´ll solve that later," Sam interrupted her, nervously glanced towards the door and to the entrance to his reality. "Now we have to hurry up, okay?"

"Yeah."

He tried to bring her to her feet, but she was so weakened she couldn´t even stand up. She practically fell into Sam´s arms. He lifted her, she was light as a feather.

 _I should´ve done that right away_ , he realized, eyes fixed on the dirty door window. Along with that thought, he spotted a shadow on the other side, nothing concrete, just a movement. He stopped breathing for a moment. The light bulb flickered.

 _Dammit!_

Buzzing, crackling, darkness and light again.

And then darkness.

"No, not this," his mother mumbled. She was wording Sam´s thoughts. "They´ll come now... they can´t..."

He wasn´t paying attention to her. He stopped caring whether he was handling her roughly, he just threw himself to the shimmering gold line, dragging Mary with him.

In that moment he knew he was late.

And maybe he knew it all along.

Oppressive constriction around his stomach, a silent voice in his subconscious.  
 _  
You should´ve known. When was the last time something with the potential of going into utter shit went well?_

 _Never.  
_  
With a muffled gasp he collided with a padded wall, managing to twist his body so that he wouldn´t crush Mary under him.

 _Admit it, it wasn´t just an inkling. You were expecting failure. Alright, maybe not consciously, but somewhere deep down you reckoned with this._

He didn´t even have to search for the glimmer of gold glow in the darkness that fell. It was gone. The way back ceased to exist.

"Sam?" Mary´s voice suddenly sounded almost sane. "What happened?"

 _Either there´s Lucifer walking around or I was just betrayed by his son – nothing special, mom..._

"Just... it just got a bit complicated now," he said aloud. With his back to the wall, he slowly slid down and helped his mother sit next to him. Her head fell on his shoulder. Although she was still fighting with the effects of whatever was coursing through her veins, it didn´t exactly look like she was winning.

"You shouldn´t have come here," she muttered barely intelligibly. "If you... if you´re really here."

"Come on," he pulled her into his arms. "Of course I´m here for real. We´re still getting out of here together, mom. We can make it together."

She released a sound that sounded like something between a sob and a chortle, in which the beginning of the next sentence was drowned: "...very useful, boy."

"You´ll get out of this," he tried to encourage her, but it sounded stupid even to him. He didn´t believe they will get the time to relax here, before either those who got Mary into this state arrive, or even Lucifer himself.

Whomever was the owner of the shadow behind the door.

"Do you... um, know something about where we are now?" he asked with little hope for a usable answer.

"I´m not sure," his mother surprised him, she sounded less out of it now. "Maybe it´s Hell, just masquerading as some... some freaky madhouse." She paused. "Or the other way around," she added. "A madhouse which... which changes into Hell."

"No. That can´t be... How long, mom? How long have you been here?"

"I don´t know," she whispered. "I don´t know, sorry."

"It´s okay," he lied and patted her on the shoulder. His head felt as if it was about to explode any second, as he tried to think through their current options – although he couldn´t see many – and at the same time put together what actually happened and who they´re dealing with.

He didn´t think this place was Hell. Another dimension or not, Sam was pretty sure that if he once again found himself in Hell, he´d know damn fast.

"Days," Mary spoke up at last. "Maybe. A few days."

Sam nodded to himself. So he wasn´t wrong. Time here corresponded to their home dimension.

"That fits," he replied. He shortly hesitated before asking another pressing question: "And Lucifer?"

Mary flinched, then stiffened, like she was trying to straighten up, regain her strength and mettle. "I thought... I was going to die, that there was no other option, he was so furious..." She paused. "I was expecting the worst. You know... I made peace with that. And then... then I only knew I was here. I don´t know what happened to him."

"It´s alright," he caressed her shoulder reassuringly.

"I´m sorry, Sam," his mother peeped, "I... can´t think clearly. I´m losing... I don´t know what´s real and what isn´t."

"We lived through worse," he forced himself to an encouraging tone. But he couldn´t bring himself to believe his own words.

"Sam," she continued, probably not even listening to what he just said. "Listen to me... When they come, soon... when the light went out, you know. When they come, we´ll have to... play smart."

He could only agree.

"Pretend," she added. Then she let out a long sigh, Sam reckoned that she was resisting sleep with the last of her strength.

"Okay," he nodded.

"Don´t fight. Not right away."

"I understand."

"...angry," she whispered softly for the last time. "Really, Sammy. That you´re here. Stupid idea. But... glad."

"I know," he sighed. "I know, mom."

And then he was left only with his thoughts.

Not for long.

As Mary predicted, they appeared soon, right after she fell into a drug-induced stupor once more.

Their entrance was announced first by dim light behind the door glass, then by muffled voices. Sam looked up, carefully pushing his mother away from him – she nestled against the wall, into a similar position in which Sam first found her. Deciding whether he should wake her up was simple.

Mary Winchester in her current state presented a handicap. This truth remained, no matter how cruel or unwelcome.

"...but how the hell would a guy get into the female ward? Not to mention into isolation?"

A voice from the outside, near the door. Sam stood up and positioned himself with his back to the wall right next to the door hinges, where the handle would be under any other circumstances.

"How should I know," the second voice rang out. "Why should that be my problem? It´s just more fucking work."

A click of keys in the lock.

The door opened.

"Come on, hunk," he heard, and then Sam was blinded by a flashlight aimed straight into his face. These two – he assumed they were men – we no dumb muscle, while one stayed back, the other one easily reached for Sam. "Nice and slow, and hands up."

"And no fooling around," the other added, with the same authoritarian tone. "It´s not only the flashlight he´s aiming at you."  
 _  
Don´t fight. Not right away._

 _Alright, mom, you were probably right..._

Originally he meant to attack right as one of the two would step through that door – a quick, unexpected ambush, knock both of them to the ground, grab mom and finally piss off from there.

The chance for success dropper to near zero when they lost their way back to their world. And if he lets himself be separated from Mary, their odds will go from minuscule to infinitesimal.

 _Calm down. I can still... well, play it smart._

"Move, hotshot," the man with the flashlight spurred him. "We don´t have the whole day."  
Aside from thinking through his next course of action, Sam used the short time span since the door opened to let his eyes get used to the light – he still might have been helplessly squinting against the bright light, but the strip lights on the corridor in front of the cell no longer blinded him.

He slowly peeled his back off of the wall, hands above his head, his palms open and conjured up a confused smile on his face.

 _I´m sorry, guys, I have no idea what´s happening and I´m not dangerous at all,_ his face was supposed to say.

He was using every available moment to carefully observe the space around him.

Two men, he was right. One with a full beard, black hair, standing right against the door, keeping his distance few steps away from Sam. The second one, close-cropped hair, militaristic type, aside from the flashlight, he also held a gun in a position typical for someone with training. It wasn´t a classical firearm, as Sam realized, it was a stun gun; which didn´t mean he wanted to get hit by that.

 _At least they don´t inten_ _d_ _to kill me_ , he thought. And right next, almost blasphemously: _only if that´d actually be an advantage..._

He rather chose to focus on other briefly gathered observations.

The uniforms of military personnel. Long police batons and... yes, high military lace-up boots, The white trousers tucked into them looked almost comically.

 _Someone call the fashion police..._

"Come on," the one with the beard nudged him on, his baton ready as if for a hit in baseball.

"Okay," Sam spoke up at last and put on his best meek face, "okay, just keep calm, I... I don´t want any trouble."

"Bit late for that, bro," Mr Baton growled, but relaxed a bit nonetheless.

Just two more steps.

One.

 _No fast movements._

 _Now!  
_  
The exact moment the beard guy reached out, undoubtedly to twist Sam´s hand behind his back and pacify him for good, Sam dropped his charade.

Turn, slip away from beard guy, don´t forget to take down Mr Flashlight with his shoulder at the same time, once his head smashes into the door frame, eliminate the taser threat.

"You damn bastard!"

Who wastes their breath on curses won´t have time to block a strike.

Which Sam conveyed to the beard guy pretty clearly.

His left side exploded with pain when he caught a heavy blow to the kidneys with another baton – the still swearing flashlight guy reconsidered his equipment.

 _Don´t heed the pain. Catch the outstretched weapon of one opponent, throw him into the other one. Don´t ease up. Explo_ _i_ _t the moment of dominance, get at least one on the ground._

A moment where Fortune´s balance scales finally tipped into Sam´s favor.

And a moment where Mary came to again.

He didn´t catch the quiet moan. Fully focused on his effort to keep his opponents on the defensive before he manages to knock them out for good.

He didn´t catch the rustling as his mother tried to scramble up on her feet.

He did catch the shout.

"Sam?!"

He turned around on reflex. It was a split second before his conscious mind drowned out the instinct, to inform the brain that this is a bad idea.

But these few moments were all it took.

A whoosh, Sam still managed to raise his hand in an attempt to block a punch. He missed millimeters. He felt the baton almost brushing his forearm, perhaps just a waft of air and then only the crushing blow across his ear and jaw.

A crack. Supernova exploding inside his head.

He barely registered himself swaying and falling to his knees, unable to control his body. With the same vagueness, he registered the other blows raining on him. As if everything was happening underwater.

Out of the corner of his eyes he saw mom, who by some miracle managed to stand on her feet and stagger towards the door with a tenacious expression.

Which the beard guy slammed right in front of her face.

 _Mom_ , Sam tried to speak. He could speak about as well as if he was on the bottom of the ocean.

Ultimately, right then it didn´t matter anymore. Nothing mattered anymore.

20,000 volts coursed through his body. He didn´t lose consciousness, the shot just moved him closer to total darkness.

"Freddy..." he heard somewhere from a distance. "Isn´t this a bit of an overkill? The bastard had enough."

"He broke by dose, botherfucker!"

Another discharge.

Awareness of reality was fading elsewhere. Thrumming undersea currents were pulling Sam apart. He tried to resist them, escape the horrible pain they brought."

"Dot edough for hib, huh?!"

"Leave him. Freddy, we can´t do him in..."

"Last tibe."  
 _  
What´s a firework doing underwater?_

 _D_ _on´t want it... hurts..._

Each sparks ripped chunks of meat out of Sam´s body. And when the last one was gone, they left a shell, floating in darkness, exhausted, without will.

If he found a speck of strength in him when the two met were dragging his body past the locked cells, if he could turn his head, maybe he´d catch a glimpse of a shadow of a familiar figure. With hands folded on chest and a satisfied smile on face. The one who observed everything and remained unseen.

But Sam was lost deep under the surface of consciousness. And he wouldn´t emerge for some time.

 **xXx** ****

 **Shit escalates with each chapter so stay tuned :)**


	2. Chapter 2 - The Ultimate Cure

**The lawyer speak in this chapter broke me.** ****

 **Thanks to everyone who reviewed last chapter, here we go...**

 **xXx**

 **Chapter 2: The Ultimate Cure**

He occasionally came close to waking up. Bright white light was stabbing his eyes, he remembered sharp pain in his head from the otherwise hazy events, hot throbbing in his jaw. Fever and chills, uncontrollable shivering. Voices, which he could hear only through one ear and couldn´t catch the meaning they carried.

He didn´t know how much time passed before he finally woke up with more or less clear mind. It could have been hours, or even days. Not too long, however, because he could still feel the after-effects of the remorseless ass-kicking.

He almost wanted to go back into feverish hallucinating.

He was lying on bare floor in in a cell identical to the one where he had found his mother. The only thing that was different were the smudges on the walls; had different shapes and locations. In place of his clothes, he was issued a new garment, a courtesy of the institution. He could finally appreciate how the rough and unyielding fabric grazed against his skin. Furthermore, while he was out, his captors rewarded him with another essential accessory from the setting of a generic mental hospital horror: a tight straitjacket.

Very tight.

 _So much for the ´while there´s life, there is hope´ saying,_ he thought. If he doesn´t manage to ditch this piece soon, he won´t exactly have an easy time breathing.

Okay, while he wasn´t moving and was laying down completely calm, he could manage. But one attempt at sitting up later left him feeling like he was being crushed in the grip of an angry boa constrictor.

 _Don´t panic. If you loose your cool, it´s the end_ _for you_ _._

 _Hmm, because otherwise it´s all rainbows and unicorns._

In that moment it was incredibly appealing to just give up. Stop foolishly hoping, close his eyes and succumb to whatever they had in store for him.

But he would never forgive himself.

Mom was still there, alive and near. And Dean was still somewhere, although very very far, but undoubtedly planning his own suicidal rescue mission despite Sam´s best efforts.

Which didn´t mean Sam was counting with him, no – he has to gather all of his strength, do the impossible and turn his failure into success before his brother flies head-first into the same mess.

Of course, for now he could only wait, fully dependent on how the situation will unveil, without being able to influence it.

 _Or I could call it waiting for another opportunity._

He was starting to feel really tired from his intensive effort to stay positive. Irrespective of the persisting weakness resulting from his body trying to cope with the damage; the deaf ear and most likely chipped jaw aside, at least a few ribs were bruised and the tight clamp around his chest wasn´t helping any.

He closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe deeply and calmly. If nothing else, he can at least rest. Gather his strength.

At least that´s what he planned on doing, before he fell into a deep slumber.

Sea again, pleasant this time. It rocked him softly in its warm embrace. Waves on the surface high above him where whispering, _everything_ _will_ _be alright_. They washed away both fear and pain.

Infinite time, no danger. He was safe.

Before a flash slashed through the water.

A harpoon at first, but then it sunk into Sam´s shoulder, it changed into a butcher´s hook. Whatever it was, it was pulling him towards the surface, under the suddenly dark sky, full of bloody red storm clouds.

"Wakey wakey, dandy!"

He blinked, his constricted rib cage ached when he instinctively gasped for breath.

"Aww, look at the poor thing."

These two again. A still nameless beard guy and Freddy. Sam felt a flicker of childish satisfaction when he noticed the still unfaded bruise around Freddy´s nose, now also crooked-looking. Perhaps some of his glee showed on his face, because the guy flushed a little red.

"What, not smiling today?" he smirked at Sam, while his partner was lifting Sam on his legs.

 _Get this damn thing off me and I´ll show you a smile,_ Sam thought. He didn´t say anything aloud. For one he had no breath to waste on these two, for another there was no point reacting to obvious provocations.

While the two led him through the corridor and Freddy kept relentlessly prodding and poking, Sam was trying to map his surroundings as inconspicuously as possible, to create an approximate mental map of the building. Just not to think how and if he´ll have a chance to use his findings.

 _No windows anywhere, they are most likely located underground._

They passed elevators and stairways twice. Walked by three gratings, the outdated type, which the beard guy opened with keys from a hefty bundle. That comforted Sam, an ordinary lock didn´t mean an invincible obstacle. A guard was sitting in a booth by the last iron bars, which wasn´t all that comforting.

No signs, directional signs, anything that could hint Sam at where the entire object is situated and what the hell was its purpose.

He was slowly inclining to the theory that this must have originally been some kind of secret government institution. The lack of information was a clue in itself.

They reached from the block with the cells to a corridor looking like an altogether ordinary bureau. Just without name tags on the door. Obviously.

And obviously, they had to go the entire way here at a brisk pace.

Sam refused to beg for them to slow down, one of the reasons being that he could vividly imagine how Freddy would relish in his suffering, but when they finally arrived to the last door, there were white spots dancing in his vision and his lungs were screaming complaints about insufficient supplying. It crossed his mind that swooning like a Victorian missy wasn´t exactly a win either.

Maybe it could be against what awaited him at the other side of the last door.

Nothing horrible at first glance.

The gray, dingy corridor gave the impression of a place everyone left tens of years ago and returned only recently without bothering to clean up, change the furniture or reconstruct the place. Freddy knocked on the old door and Sam was ushered inside.

A gray office, and an equally gray, bland man behind the desk. He didn´t even lift his head from the papers in front of him when the orderlies seated Sam, gasping for breath, on a chair facing the man. He didn´t speak, just waved his hand in the universal gesture of _´get out´_.

The beard guy obeyed without a word. Freddy patted Sam on the shoulder and leaned closer.

"Bon voyage, bugger," he hissed. His breath reeked of onion and raw meat.

Sam´s expression betrayed none of his thoughts, but Freddy, behind whom the door finally closed, managed managed to plant a seed inside his mind.

 _Bon voyage? To where?_

While he stayed in the same building as Mary, he could plan ahead, hold on to the hope. If they want to relocate him...

It kept getting more difficult to focus on controlling his breathing, he had to calm down. Otherwise fainting could easily be on his daily schedule. And right now, he couldn´t afford to give up like that.

"So, Sam Winchester," the man behind the desk suddenly spoke up. His voice evoked imagery of ancient archives full of dust and spiderwebs. "I was authorized to inform you that the upper management just reached a decision regarding the next course of action in your case."

"Eh... what?" Sam only managed to stammer out. Even from this one word, his injured jaw flared up in pain again.

The man shifted his glasses and looked at Sam for the first time.

"Your treatment. The course of your treatment."

If Sam was confused up till now, now he was completely lost. "I´m not... sick," he stuttered. The pain that changed his words into barely intelligible mumble transformed his statement into slightly absurd issue.

"Yes you are, naturally you cannot dispute that," the clerk stated. "A lamentable concern. And then there is the second aspect of your case."

"What the hell is going on?" Although Sam put extra effort into clearly pronouncing each syllable of his question, the man ignored him. He rustled through his papers and glanced into them with almost loving eyes.

"According to the procedure codex I will now summarize the decision the upper management reached: Sam Winchester, you do not exist. Therefore there is no entitled claimant, so the right of the finder was employed, which in its conclusion fully ratifies the chosen process and you lose the right to anyhow object against the decision of the management."

 _Great_ , Sam thought bitterly, _at least I know where I wound up. In a cuckoo nest ruled by cuckoos._

"At the same time I am commissioned to execute your treatment," the four-eyes continued and flashed Sam an unexpected smile. A wide, brilliant and utterly deranged smile. As if he was trying to confirm Sam´s thought. "If you have no objections, we can start right away. If you do have objections, I can note them down. We will start in the time directly following this entry."

Sam shortly closed his eyes and suppressed the urge to start screaming. "Just... questions," he said at last. "I have some questions."

The man hesitated. "I am not authorized to answer potential questions. But I can record them and deliver the answers withing 30 working days starting-"

"No thanks," Sam interrupted him. He´d rather go through another session with the taser than have another chat with this white-collar from Ministry of Nightmares.

"I´m noting down that you withdrew your appeal for additional information," the man muttered to himself. "We can immediately begin your treatment."

 _Not that I´d have a choice,_ Sam thought. But sure, _I´ll get a horse dose of roofies and once I recover from that a bit, I´ll act out a perfectly healthy patient and slowly pull myself together. I´ll manage... somehow I´ll manage._ _For now I´ll at least get away from this babbling lunatic._

The babbling lunatic was meanwhile meticulously recording data into a form. In a pause between two sheets of paper he pulled out and opened a black case lined with crimson velvet. Inside rested an outdated type of syringe, full of transparent liquid.

He finished writing and looked up at Sam, the eyes behind the polished glasses glinting madly.

"This is a very curious opportunity," he said, lifted the syringe and tapped the glass with a finger. It looked slightly cracked, but upon closer inspection, Sam could discern tiny signs, similar to runes. "Usually, this procedure is somewhat more complicated. Sodium thiopental should be applied first, after which the patient falls asleep, but in this case it is recommended to directly use potassium chloride, therefore..."

Sam forgot how to breathe.

 _No... this is madness..._

"...I can establish a comprehensive image about the therapeutic process with the full awareness of the patient."

 _I can´t... I can´t end up like this!_

"Naturally, during the entire course of the procedure I will be putting together extensive notes. Which could, in a manner of speaking, balance out your unfortunate non-existence, Mr Winchester."

"I exist, dammit!"

"Yes, that is the problem and the discrepancy which needs to be remedied in accordance with the decision of the upper management."

 _To hell with you and your upper management!_

While four-eyes stood up and walked over to the table to begin the treatment, Sam gave up his attempts at protecting himself verbally. Although he didn´t see any purpose in trying to run away or fight back, he was seized by purely animal instincts.

He pushed himself off the desk with his legs and fell to the ground together with his chair. He cried out when the bruised side of his head connected with the ground but he didn´t stop kicking around. A thought flashed through his had, as insane as the clerk with the deadly injection himself – _he won´t let him get close, he´ll resist until... until..._

"Be reasonable, Mr Winchester, I already explained to you that as a non-existant person you lose any claim for objections!"

 _And as a person in very tight straitjacket I also lose any claim for physical effort, he probably forgot to add._

 _Either I calm down and let myself be killed or I will continue, nod off in a minute and he kills me either way._

 _Really great._

"I have to alert you," the man continued with an absurdly indignant expression, "if you don´t allow me to focus on the execution of my duty, I will not be held responsible for potential application of the medicine into a muscle, which will cause unwanted complications and devalue the results of my work."

If Sam could gather enough air in his lungs, he´d probably start screaming at this point.

Instead he stopped kicking and froze. Perhaps he should be continuing, the world was going black around him and the comforting embrace of unconsciousness was opening before him, but something was urging him to hold on until the last seconds, perhaps subconscious compulsion to keep at least semblance of control over the situation, perhaps desperate hope for a rescue in the last minute...

Once he stopped resisting, the clerk was suddenly right above him with a spidery jump.

The moment where the point of the syringe penetrated through the skin on his neck, Sam was still waiting for something to happen, something that would stop the entire process.

Fire spread through his veins, incinerating each and every last speck of hope.

It forced Sam to scream long after his breath ran out and then only wheeze, it broke him in spasms.

And right as he stopped his heart and knock out the last scrap of breath from his lungs after the last deathly rattle, he made him believe.

 _This is the end._


	3. Chapter 3 - (Some) Memories Remain

**Translating this chapter was a very intense process to me. So intense in fact, that I translated all of the 5k words of it in one sitting, I just couldn´t stop writing.**

 **Thanks to all those of you who reviewed and hope you enjoy this as much as I did.**

 **xXx**

Nothingness.

Concepts like up and down, near and far, the space itself – mere abstractions.

Time remains an empty notion. No meaning.

Consciousness remained. No body, no sensed capable of perceiving, just raw and defenseless self. Writhing with the desire to grip something familiar, even if it would be suffering.

"Why?!" a fair-haired girl is screaming, bleeding and burning. "Why did you allow this to happen?"

Sam can´t find words to use in his defense. The heat of the fire is scorching him, he tries to reach her, all in vain, to reach his Jess, pull her back to safety even if it kills him, but he can´t, he isn´t able to. So weak...

"It´s your fault!" last scream, voice full of flames.

A fleeting thought – _that´s not what happened._

But it doesn´t matter. It´s not important if guilt irretrievably deformed the original memory. It´s true, and for Sam it remains the only reality in which he can exist.

Before he returns nowhere.

He alternates between a state of insufferable powerlessness in the middle of nothingness and snapshots from his life, all of them so vivid... and all of them distorted by guild and pain.

Memories. From childhood till the most recent, fresh ones.

Each failure. Each shard of guilt.

Each loss.

Nothing else.

He´s not offered a moment of solace, a single moment not filled with despair and ruination.

He´s not even trying to find them. Sam´s life is a continuous series of horrendous atrocities. And most of them are his fault in one way or another.

Nothing happy or good here. Never was. Never will be.

"You went with a demon instead of your own brother," Dean tells him. It´s hard to find an answer for that, no defense nor apology, no matter how much Sam tries to. Each of his brother´s words sting like white-hot iron and he knows he deserves all of it and more.

"You were the one I trusted the most. And you betrayed me in ways that even I can´t..."

Sins of the past, long forgiven, long rectified, long redeemed a thousand times.

No.

It´s fresh, vivid, present.

"I can´t trust you anymore."

He leaves Sam on a darkened parking lot.

"I sold my soul to save you. And this is what I get?" So much disdain in Dean´s voice.  
 _  
When did he say that?_

 _Does it even matter? Now it´s the truth._

"I was tossed around in Purgatory, dammit, and you didn´t even bother with trying to find me. You calmly went to live your small-town dream."

"You left me to die!"

 _So many times..._

 _And not only Dean._

"You left me to die," Bobby whispers.

Father.

Mother.

Kevin.

Charlie.

So many. Friends. Acquaintances.

He tries to resist, defend himself. Deep under the surface hides an inkling, something amidst all these moments is amiss, Sam feels a shadow of wrongness. But he has nothing to lean against. Where to search for truth to purge his name when his own mind offers him nothing but hopelessness?

Accepting the offered reality remains. Anything better than nothingness.

He keeps going through his sins and mistakes again and again and again. The constant repeating doesn´t take away anything of their torturous insistence. It stretches since the dawn of age, it stretches into eternity and Sam doesn´t remember anything else existing beside this kaleidoscope of everything that is bad.

He´s losing the faint notion that all of this is just images memories. Individual episodes don´t begin and don´t end, they just... are.

Life. Reality.

 _Keep going._

He´s standing on the shore of a lake. A moment ago the light of a portal vanished into a different dimension and so did Mary. Just a few steps further lies a dead body, an angel vessel. Air is thickening, crushing atmosphere of grief and despair, each breath brings a deluge of bitterness.

"It should´ve been you," Dean stands above his murdered friend, but is turning to Sam. To Sam and to the silent sky. The silent voice is followed by a furious scream. "You hear me?" he´s calling to the absent God and points to Sam. "You hear me you bastard? He should´ve died, not Cas!"

"Dean," Sam breathes out. It´s only a name.

 _This isn´t Dean. This... this isn´t the truth!_

"I don´t need you," there is icy contempt in his brother´s voice, hatred. "I gave you so many chances. And you fucked it up each time, Sam. I don´t need you. I need Cas back."

Sam wants to agree with his entire being – each time he looks back, he only sees the destruction he brought on, failures and bad decisions – but there is a silent voice telling him otherwise. And the more Dean accuses his brother, the stronger is this newly born inner defender.

 _That´s not how it went. Dean would never say something like this._

 _Sure, he just thought that... and he was right..._

 _Shut up, Sammy, you know this is just a stupid illusion!_

Dean walks right to him, grips his shirt and hisses right into his face: "You should´ve died, you hear me?! You!"

Through the feeling that his entire being is consisting solely of a pathetic mixture of guilt and misery, through the impossibility of remembering anything else, Sam miraculously gets a grip. He shoves his brother´s hands aside and pushes him away.

"You´re not real," he croaks. "This isn´t real!"

Darkness starts spreading across his vision.

He awaits return into nothingness, to more cursed memories. Instead he feels his body, cold floor tiling on which his face lies, he hears... clapping?

It´s more like a few lukewarm smacks rather than an applause. In either case, together with the sound came the end of the unendurable, Sam could once again perceive all of himself; what created him, memories and emotions no longer twisted by a veil of darkness. The relief was so immense he couldn´t even move at first. Not even open his eyes.

Until a familiar voice made him.

"Sammy, Sammy, Sammy. Took your sweet time."

Sarcastic playfulness, concealing hatred.

Electric discharge coursed through Sam with each syllable. He flinched, scrambled himself to all four and then stood up, and walked backwards from the figure in front of him until his back hit the wall. Unable to properly perceive his surroundings, with the fleeting though, _why must the throne room of Hell always look the same..._

His mind was still clouded by a sort of hangover from the infinite repeating of the worst-of compiled from the moments of his life, and he could only stare wide-eyed at the amused-looking Lucifer.  
 _  
_ _How...? Okay, I can understand death, me ending in Hell would make sense, no su_ _r_ _prise here, but him? What is he doing here? Or is this his local version?_

 _Except I don´t exist for the resident Lucifer here. He shouldn´t have a reason to be interested in me._

 _What the hell is this supposed to mean?_

"We´ll skip the stupid questions running through your head, shall we?"

Sam opened his mouth, the urge to ask stronger than reason. But before he could get a sound out, Lucifer stopped him with a lift of his hand. "No? Fine," he rolled his eyes with annoyance. "Yes, you are dead, yes, you are in Hell. And yes, for my version here you are less interesting than a flea on a monkey´s ass." He patted Sam´s face – when Sam recoiled from his touch, for a moment something real flashed through his face, wrath so burning it shone like a dying star. "But my local version... well, let´s say he and Mike managed to atomize each other. Which didn´t end the war, no. But it certainly helped them to welcome me with great, really great joy. The return of the King!"

He spread out his hands, a wide smile on his face. "I will soon reign over this entire shitty sandpit, before I return to trample over yours. You wanted to imprison me, but instead you gave me an entire new world to play!"

"And now you´re here too. A new world, an old friend," he added quietly. "And that obviously means, Sammy, that you´ll need... hmm, a little redesigning."

"Reigning a world," Sam finally managed to find his voice. And courage. That partly stemmed from the knowledge that he had nothing to lose, but also from all the anger and tiredness over the same old repeating scenario. "Destroy a world. Screw me over. Don´t you have anything new?"

Lucifer took a step back. He shook his head and tapped his index finger over his lips.

"Funny," he smirked. "All this coming from you of all people. A pathetic bundle of doubt about himself, patched up with phoney pride. You´re fooling yourself, that you´re a new person, Sammy, that you grew up. But you´re still... a Winchester. A wannabe hero, who always screws everything up in the worst way imaginable. This should be a dictionary definition, seriously."

"Say what you want," Sam whispered. "You ended up in a reality that can´t be any more lost. Your son doesn´t exactly bend over backwards to help you out of here and-"

Lucifer´s palm hit the wall next to Sam´s face with such force, that the solid rock below trembled.

"Forget Junior! And concerning me, I´m only warming up. And your main concern right now should be yourself, buddy."

"I can admit I´ve lost," Sam said and lightly shrugged his shoulders. "And I have no idea what you want from me, why all this, but... whatever it is, you won´t get it. We´ve been in this kind of situation so many times, and never-"

"I´ll phrase it this way," the fallen archangel hissed into his face. "Your big brother lasted thirty years before he broke down – or at least, that´s what he claims, right? As for you, there is a different way to break you than I tried last time, but it will work. It took just a year before you almost went mad, and maybe you´re proud of yourself that you managed to get out of your own pathetic mind, but it will become harder and harder, trust me."

Sam tried to ignore the provocations and instead quickly do the math. Somewhere deep in his soul a spark of hope flared up – three days, mere three days, his mom is probably still alive – but at the moment, he rather concealed his hope even from himself.

Hope in this moment equaled madness. He´s dead, in Hell. In a reality where he has no allies. No-one who even knew as much as his name.

He doesn´t exist.

However he could get out of here now?

"What´s going on here?" He didn´t believe he´ll get a meaningful answer and tried to guess: "Do you want to make a demon out of me?"

"What?" And Lucifer started laughing, stepped back again. "What use could I have for you as a demon? No, don´t worry, you´ll stay Sam fucking Winchester till the end of time. A human. My human."

Together with the last words, he gave Sam a conspirator y wink, and then with one flick of his hand, he threw him back into the darkness.

 **xXx**

He´s laying in a crib, a newborn with the soul of an adult. Perceives everything, can´t change anything. A single breath in, a movement, a smile of a baby mouth without a single tooth. Things are in motion with fateful irreversibility.

A dark figure over the crib, taste of blood in mouth, sweet and tempting. He sucks and swallows, more desirous than for breast milk.

With full knowledge that it will soon cost his mother her life.

 _No, I didn´t know back then. I didn´t realize, I was a damn baby!_

 _But later you will know, won´t you?_

 _Way more than you would like, way more than anyone is able to control._

 _And you won´t stop._

Ruby.

She makes him believe anything and he readily lets himself be fooled. Because he wants to believe he´s doing it for the greater good, not for the taste of blood and sex with a demoness.

 _But I really believed that._

 _Really? Then why I lied Dean, why I hid this from him, if I was able to explain it?_

It´s not possible to leave the past behind, not even when Sam finds himself in dead meantime between individual moments of his life, it´s not possible, because nothing in life a past is here, no future either. Just endless now.

"Don´t touch me!" a young huntress pulls away from him with a hateful expression on her pretty young face.

"My family... all of them dead, because Sam Winchester opened the gate to this world for Lucifer," she explains, disdain and anger mirrored in her eyes and in the eyes of the others.

Sam can´t find words again, only Dean can some time later. And if his brother expects a consolation or reassurance, a few words that they are in this together, what happened happened and they saved more lives than they ruined, he won´t hear those words.

"What am I supposed to tell you, Sam? You started the damn Apocalypse. Something like that can never be forgiven. Never."

In that moment, Sam would rather be torn apart alive, but his wishes are irrelevant. He has to continue, has to go on and spread destruction and despair like some contagious disease.

"I could have a life... a normal life with Lisa and Ben. If you hadn´t showed up. Without a soul. And with a damn lot of cock-ups I had to take care of," Dean tells him. "Who asked you?"

 _No-one. I myself have pleaded,_ _beseech_ _him to forget about me, to live the life I wished for myself. Maybe I couldn´t leave him be exactly because of that._

 _Out of envy?_

And again and again, without rest, without the opportunity to think about what is a real memory and what is an image corrupted by guilt. A perfect circle; the longer Sam moved through it, the worse he feels and the more truth the memories carry, no matter how fictive they are.

He´s murdering Kevin, in cold blood and without hesitation:

 _That... that was Ga_ _d_ _reel. I didn´t ask to be possessed by a fucking mu_ _r_ _derous angel!_

 _Didn´t you? Or did you backed out of death at the last moment, irreversible and final, even though you said you were ready for it? You cl_ _u_ _ng_ _to life no matter what..._

 _If I knew the prize-_

 _Stop kidding yourself, Sam, you know it all too well, you know the cost of each of the another chances of yours._

He lets Dean die by Metatron´s hand and then brings him back to life. As a demon.  
 _  
_ _Do you think that´s what he wanted?_

 _And do you care at all? You don´t, Sam, do you. You don´t save your brother, you save, what a surprise, yourself – because you know that you´re too weak, too damaged, because you can´t put up with the huge pile of shit you call your life by yourself._

He´s lying to his brother, again and again.

 _Because if he knew the truth, he wouldn´t want to see you ever again._

Bloody and dying Charlie looking at him, asking with her last breath: "Why did you let this happen?"

 _I... I´m a poison._

 _A goddamn toxic waste._

 _Whoever gets to close ends up the same sooner or later... choking on their own blood, asking the same question: why, Sam?_

 _And I can´t answer._

The inner defender, the voice that tries to rebel, keeps getting weaker. Accepting all the guilt without doubt hurts, yes, but attempting to fight back and loosing these hardly won shards of faith in yourself again and again, that´s unbearable.

Sam isn´t able to resign completely, but he´s nearing there.

Does it matter, if something is truth or just an illusion if he lives through both with the same intensity?

If it´s impossible to recall if his life ever looked any different?

It takes an eternity and this time there is no revelation, no rejection of the ongoing scenario. No applause this time either. Just the sudden coldness of stone against his face and paralyzing confusion when the real memories try to return to their places, already occupied by the false ones.

 **xXx**

"Ouch, this was a bit of a disappointment, Sammy," Sam hears Lucifer´s voice as he tries to lift himself off the ground. The immense weariness he was feeling... worse than after any trashing he ever lived through. Yet he forced to lift himself to his feet, shaking and unsteady – he felt like a newborn foal. He stuck his gaze into the floor around his feet; he couldn´t look at the archangel, not while he wasn´t able to even think straight.

He was aware only of two things: he´s still a soul, trapped in Hell, and his ´physical´ state is the consequence that this soul was almost tortured to death.

And that it were lies that tortured it up to this point.

"Much better," Lucifer commented on his little bucking up. "But still. I was betting on at least those 30 year, Sammy. You barely lasted 20 years before I pulled you out – just a bit more and you´d be fucking Jell-O. True, you made it at a stretch, no player´s bench, but still... from such a damn legend one would expect a better performance.

 _Twenty years?_

The calculation that would take him just a few seconds at any other time suddenly appeared infinitely complex. And Sam realized that the archangel was watching him in amusement – most likely aware of each through passing through his tortured mind.

"Two months up there, correct," he said the moment when Sam finally arrived to that number. "Or not? What if you´re using the wrong formulas?"

 _He´s just playing you, don´t believe a word he says..._

"What?" Sam´s voice sounded hoarse in his ears, but he finally looked up to stare directly at Lucifer.

"What happened to that... open-mind thing? You´re still hoping someone will come to save you, you can´t help yourself," the archangel put on a compassionate face, about as real as the voluptuous bosom of a porn star. "I´m just suggesting options. What is the twenty years here equaled not two moths up there, but... a thousand years? Two thousand? Be a little creative."

 _He´s lying._

Sam tilted his head down again. It was so incredibly hard to fight on so many fronts at the same time – trying to retain his sanity and a notion of self that went through so much deconstruction, to find the truth, to rise from the murk of self-contempt and guilt all the while trying to find hope in places where there wasn´t any and play these exhausting games on top of all that.

"Oh come on," Lucifer´s hand slid into his hair, and when Sam flinched back, he gripped him tight and made him look into his eyes. "Is this a thank you for not letting you rot in that fucking mess that is you?"

"Why are you doing this? Why... why do you want to make me go insane?"

"Me?" the archangel had the audacity to look wronged. "This place is called Circle of Memories... like something they play on stupid scout camps: Isn´t it cute? And it´s you and only you fueling the entire merry-go-round."

"No. Those are... those are lies... Your lies."

When he was briefly flying through the air in the following moment before crashing into a wall and sliding down on it, Sam felt surprisingly... pleasant. Back to the old, familiar scenarios. End of the pretense and weirdness. Maybe it brought a few broken bones, but what the hell...

"Do you really want to insult me?!" Lucifer´s voice was full of wrath and hatred, free of the veil of feigning.

Another throw, a crash. Sam spat out blood and although everything was spinning with him, he wanted to laugh. This was real.

"Still the same," Lucifer continued. "One of your apes shoots up a school? Let´s blame Satan! Another recovers from fucking cancer? Praise the Lord! You can´t accept that your life is just a pile of worthless shit? Blame me! This is so fucking tiring!"

An awful blow came with each sentence, as if the archangel was using all the throwing Sam around like a rag doll to emphasize the punctuation.

At the end of his speech, Sam felt like a dummy figure stuffed with shards of bones and pieces of aching muscle. And also the most alive since the moment a deadly shot in the hands of an insane clerk brought him here.

 _If I can still piss of the Devil, I can´t be that bad off,_ an allusive thought flashed through his head and he smirked.

On the other hand, how should he interpret the fact, that he needs Lucifer to smash him against all the walls in a room to get back to his old self?

 _Maybe in a way that some thoughts right now aren´t exactly safe._

"You really are a lamentable piece of shit," the archangel crouched down next to him; he appeared calmer, in the way dark river currents under a thin sheet of ice did. The same thing remained down there, fury, danger. "Don´t you think so, Sammy? How you fight tooth and nail for that semblance of yourself..." he looked up, a mocking expression on his face. "The protagonist, the hero, the white hat, hmm? Instead of coming to terms with reality, as you keep telling yourself, once you get the opportunity, you start harping on about those stupid little hopes of yours – my big brother will rescue me, I´ll get out of here somehow, I´ll save mommy, blah blah blah..."

He leaned closer. Sam couldn´t pull away, actually he couldn´t make his mangled body move at all, so at least he looked the Devil straight in the eyes. Literally. "You can´t change me... not in a way where I still remain human. And... for some reason just reeaaally pushes your buttons."

For a few seconds it looked like Lucifer was deciding how to react. Then he burst out laughing. He stood up, took a step back and shook his head, like he hadn´t heard something this funny in a long time.

"That´s... that´s what you think?" he managed to get out and stifled another bubbling laughter in his palm. "Alright. Well, Sammy, you´ll soon understand that I´m trying to free you. From all the funny illusions you created for yourself."

Now it was Sam who snorted in laughter.

But he was ceasing to feel the certainty he projected. He knew, that the last time in this place Lucifer called the Circle of Memories, he almost reached a point of no return. How much longer would it take Lucifer to actually ´free´ him? And will he realize that something is wrong, when... when his entire existence will be wrong?

"Hmmm," Lucifer hummed. "And also pretending when it makes no sense at all. By that we went through the entire scale of Winchester pitifullness. So... see ya later, cowboy."

Sam closed his eyes in a futile attempt to cling to something in the last seconds, something that could help him survive the subsequent fall into nothingness, breathe in, prepare himself.

But it was exactly as futile as he expected it to be.

 **xXx**

Hours were days, days were months and years.

Taste of demon blood in newborn´s mouth.

Dead angel. Dean´s accusations.

Everything in between.

And eternity in gray timelessness, definitely not presenting him with respite, more like solidifying everything he experienced.

Sam can last for somewhat longer now. Maybe he still can´t find access to the real, correct memories, the knowledge that they existed at some point, but he can still hold on for long enough to remain at least partly himself in these dragging years of misery.

Even this slight is slowly dwindling. It´s fading so inconspicuously and slowly that Sam doesn´t even realize it. Like water, eating the shore away, crumbling rocks, a dark flood of despair hurtling through his soul, until nothing else remains.

What breaks him completely comes unexpectedly.

Memories of life with Amelia avoided him until now. When they come, it´s like a caressing a dog that was beaten its entire life.

He doesn´t trust them – at the moment he believes he´s a traitor and a murdered, he sees himself as a revolting bearer of destruction. He cannot accept... happiness.

Yet he feels it. No matter how he rejects it, because he doesn´t deserve it, because he´s taking something that doesn´t belong to him, he can´t get rid of it. He soaks in every second of his good life, relishes in it, lets it heal the wounds on his soul like a precious healing ointment.

Up until the moment where he leaves Amelia for good after that night in the motel. He chose Dean over her, because that´s how it´s supposed to be, that´s how it´s always been, but the decision is also shaped by a need to protect Amelia, to not expose her to any danger.

He´s doing the right thing, and although it hurts, it hurts in a good way.

 _The right thing? Bit too late for that, Sam,_ a voice he knows all too well whispers. He´d like to write it off as Lucifer, but... this voice is a part of him. The part he managed to lull to sleep, which has now awoken from its slumber, the part which knows, regardless of what´s going on around him, in reality Sam resides in Hell. And he deserves it.

 _I´ll show you what you caused, do you want to?_

As if he could actually choose.

 _You´ll show me lies,_ Sam wants to scream, but how could he know? How can he be sure of anything?

 _Exactly. One thing is certain: there will always be an enemy seeking you out. An enemy without consideration. You know that very well. It´s a burden you accepted a long time ago, one you should never forget._ _Do you think you can afford getting close to an innocent human without marking them as a target?_

 _Without cursing them?_

The whisper corrodes each tiny crumb of good Sam has managed to find in this part of the Circle.

 _Watch_ _closely._

 _I don´t... I don´t want to see it._

 _Watch the consequences of your mistakes._

He can´t close his eyes.

The massacred face of Amelia Richardson is turning to him, blame in her dead dead eyes.

"They asked for you..."

Her father lying in his own blood right behind.

"Why did you drag us into this? Why didn´t you warn us? Why didn´t you protect us?"

 _Yes, tell me, Sam: if you´re really such a good person, why everyone you get close to ends up dead or worse?_

Sam is silent. His mind is as well. Filled with emptiness. He surrenders, lets himself be carried away. Without questions, without doubt.

Who he was is gone. He doesn´t know whom he became.

And it doesn´t matter.

When blinding light appears in the barren place of nothingness he merged with, he remains indifferent. Even a moment later on the cold stone, he lies motionless, mind filled with darkness.

 **xXx**

"That´s what I call timing," Lucifer´s voice rings out somewhere above him, "a few more rounds and you´d be running around with black eyes. A few rounds less and I´d have the same old annoying Winchester back."

Sam doesn´t bother looking up.

"Come on, a bit of life into your dead existence, Sammy."

He felt a light kick into his side. He didn´t react to it either. Simply being felt incredibly tiring. And there was no gradual improving, no return to his original state. Maybe because Sam couldn´t bother with that either.

If there was ever anything good inside him, he didn´t want it back. It wasn´t safe. To believe meant to lay a trap for himself, to leave the last glimmers of hope die out and change into horror.

He couldn´t afford to believe.

He couldn´t afford to hope.

"Is..." he croaked, he had to hawk. "Is Amelia really dead?" It was as if he was asking the question out of inertia – something he had to ask, even if he had no actual interest in hearing the answer.

"Does it matter?"

Sam opened his eyes. Lucifer was smiling at him.

"I think," he hesitated, "I don´t think so."

The archangel crouched down to him again and with the tone of a physician about to examine a very peculiar case, he asked a question to which was really hard finding an answer right away: "How do you feel, Sammy?"

Somewhere in a repressed and locked down part of Sam´s mind, he thought that this entire situation was actually ridiculous. But he barely even registered this part of his subconscious.

"Like I were... just ash," he said slowly after a short consideration.

"But you´re not, right? You are...? Come on, you can do it."

 _It shouldn´t be hard... I know who I am, dammit._

 _Really?_

Tears welled up in his eyes, he didn´t know why. Lucifer patted his face: "Try a bit. Who are you, what kind of person are you? Come on, like in Alcoholics Anonymous."

 _Don´t make me say it...  
_  
As if all of them didn´t know it all this time already.

"Sam," a broken voice whispered. "My name is Sam Winchester. And I am... I am a very bad person."

 **xXx**

 **Reviews make me very happy. Like, in the low hundreds.**


	4. Chapter 4 - Curiosity Killed the Cat

"Sam," a broken voice whispered. "My name is Sam Winchester. And I am... I am a very bad person."

"You see," the archangel straightened up with a smile. "Didn´t even hurt."

Sam hazily remembered that under normal circumstances, he would hate Lucifer´s smirks. But he lacked the strength to hate anyone else at the moment, only himself.

"Get up," the voice above him said in an unusually friendly tone, without the usual lacing of virulence and loathing.

He blinked, wiped his eyes with a quick movement of his hand.

 _I´m_ _l_ _ying on the ground crying. If this isn´t rock bottom I don´t know what is._

"Come on, get up," Lucifer repeated. Now there was impatience in his voice. "Samuel. Get on your feet."

Sam frowned at that addressing. And even more when he noticed that the fallen archangel is offering him a hand.

 _No chance in hell_ , he thought and he knew very well that Lucifer is listening. _Maybe I´ve fucked up absolutely everything I ever touched, maybe I am a total wreck, but that doesn´t mean I´m going to be buddy-buddy with you._

Lucifer shrugged his shoulders, retracted his hand and smirked. A look full of spite and scorn return to his face as he watched Sam shakily stand up.

When he was finally standing, he was panting heavily, as if he just conquered an 8000er. Which he basically did, just not the way up. A soul, beaten down to the deepest pits of despair... it could be hardly expected from its physical form to be in top shape.

Yet he still lifted his head and stared into the archangel´s eyes. Ready for another blow, another torture. He didn´t intend to grovel, didn´t want to beg. Yes, he was broken. But that didn´t make him Lucifer´s bitch. He remained Sam Winchester, and no matter how his self-knowledge may have shifted, he couldn´t suppress one quality.

The will to fight.

Despite seeing no hope.

Despite everything else inside of him screaming to make it easy for himself, to accept things as they are, to finally give up.

"You won´t believe me, Sammy," Lucifer smiled, "but I´m glad you stayed like this."

"What do you want from me?" Sam asked the question with a feeling of enormous fatigue and without expecting an answer.

"Come on... You know the drill: curiosity killed that cat."

 _I´m dead. Dead and in Hell. What more can I lose?_

The archangel clapped his shoulder. This time he only calmly watched when Sam took a step back. He just theatrically spread his arms out and did a few dance steps.

"Oh, Sammy Boy," he sing-sang to the motive of a cult song by Frederick Weatherly. "You´re not ready yet. You still think it´s me you should fight against."

Sam meanwhile retreated to his favorite place by the wall, near the entrance door. Not that he felt more secure here, but it was close to the place where he appeared each time, and while he had no illusions about making an escape, the door by his side calmed him down somehow.

"With whom else," he said quietly. "Alright... maybe... maybe you´re not that much worse than I am, I admit that. But that doesn´t mean we will hobnob together."

Lucifer rolled his eyes in annoyance and sighed. "I want to give you time, Sammy," he said, "I really do. So try not to be so damn obnoxious."

 _Likewise_ , Sam thought. _Just throw me back already, or do whatever it is you want to do, it´ll be eternally better than this bullshit._

"Look at you," the archangel nodded. "Got so lively so fast, didn´t you. Truth to be told, I have more important matters to attend to than deal with this... monkey puberty or whatever you´re going through. Meanwhile, you can think about your manners."

"What?"

"Differently, then," Lucifer sighed, waves his hand and invisible force pressed Sam to the ground. "Sit! Stay! Wait!"

Before Sam even had time to process what was happening, the tell-tale whoosh of angel wings resounded through the room and Sam was alone. Even the force pressing him down to his knees vanished.

"Are you serious?" he whispered.

He received no answer.

 **xXx**

He lost the track of time, didn´t know how long he just sat there, back against the wall. It could´ve been ten minutes or an hour. He certainly didn´t stay in one place because he intended to obey Lucifer´s orders. He needed to think. And he finally had the opportunity.

He didn´t dissect his past and his guilt anymore, he remained fully reconciled with what his last stay in the Circle led him to. No matter how bad and damaged he felt, that was the reality and there was no point doubting that.

Instead he desperately tried to find a way to redress that.

Even with the knowledge that it was terribly late. Trying to redeem your fucked up life postmortem and in Hell... well, it looked nothing less than batshit insane.

But if his other option was to lie down, close his eyes and do nothing about it, Sam would choose insanity a thousand times over.

He looked around the throne room.

He was surprised by the fact there he never saw anyone else here, Lucifer himself aside. He assumed that the infernal forces were for one busy waging war upside, and besides, this is probably how the fallen archangel wanted and arranged it for whatever reason.

Alright, for now, the throne room was a safe space. At least in comparison with the unknown waiting behind the door.

 _I´ll start here then_ , he decided.

 _Yeah, but with what? You´re trying to find a ventilation shaft to squeeze through back inside your body or what,_ a mocking voice from the back of his mind asked.

Sam clenched his teeth and whipped his head. _Of course not. Run away from Hell? Elvis appearing in front of me is more probable._

He finally stood up. Not paying attention to the incessant doubtful voice, he started to systematically search through the hall.

He had no idea what he was looking for.

 _When I´ll see it, I´ll know._

Shelves filled with books. That´s where he headed first, before he realized he probably doesn´t have time for thorough reading and research – he had no idea when Lucifer will return or someone else will burst into the room. He picked a few titles that interested him and promised to them and to himself that he will come back to them at the nearest opportunity. If he´ll be allowed to stay here alone more often... after all, time was a currency of which he had more than enough.

Maybe that will mean a bit of sycophancy and lying, but it was Lucifer and Sam didn´t think he´d have a guilty conscience over tricking the King of Hell.

And now, while he can...

He glanced to the door and hesitated. Then he walked over to the wall where lay a small display of various cold weapons on decorated stands.

 _Do you seriously think these will be useful against demons?_

 _Do you seriously think that Lucifer would grant you access to weaponry that would be of use to a human soul in Hell?  
_  
He smirked.

 _Well, looks like I´ll have to try. Last time I checked, the outcome was still the same: I have nothing to lose._

After a short consideration he ended up with an impressive looking scimitar with its blade decorated with tiny Arabic writings. He could only decipher a couple of words – the ones he knew from his endless research and studies in perhaps all existing dead and alive languages and writings.

 _Aljahim – Hell._

 _Íblis – Devil._

 _Almawt – Death._

 _How desperate do I have to be to react to these three words with ´that looks promising´?"_

 _And do I really have to ask myself this question?_

He experimentally swung the blade a few times. The noble steel cut through the air with menacing swishing. Sam nodded with appreciation and headed towards the door.

He half expected them to be locked. To be presented with another challenge, trying to come up with how to open them. So he pushed into them with more force than was necessary. Both wings opened with horrible creaking, but lightly.

Out, into the swirling darkness.

 **xXx**

No corridor, regardless of how repulsive, no save, no other room... no normal space whatsoever. The thing Sam was facing looked like a moving picture of something dark, taken from inside a centrifuge. A whirl of depressing colors. Just looking into it made Sam feel the vertigo.

 _I have nothing to lose._

Sam shrugged his shoulders. Fear presented a completely senseless emotion at this point. Even though he couldn´t stop himself from feeling it, he simply refused to take in into account.

He gripped the scimitar´s handle tighter and stepped out of the door.

Panic gripped him in it´s suffocating embrace for a moment; he couldn´t breathe.

 _Does a soul need to breath?_

And another wave of horror, this felt like the nothingness he experienced in the Circle of Memories.

 _No, I still have a body, I´m still holding a weapon. It doesn´t matter than I have no idea where´s up and down._

He stubbornly refused to give in to anxiety. He ignored his lungs, begging for air. He soon found out, that even if it feels horribly uncomfortable, that despite he fact he wasn´t breathing, there was no weakness or fainting. Without knowing what the next step will bring, he took it... forward.

The swirling of unclear shapes and blurs was slowing down with each step. Almost like eyes getting used to darkness; he could slowly begin to make out silhouettes, nothing concrete, only with his next steps his view begun to sharpen, before finally stabilizing – at the Sam moment Sam felt solid floor under his feet and could finally breathe again.

The blissful relief lasted only shortly.

The place where he appeared had a sole advantage: it was a place. Not a chaotic space without rules. Other than that, everything defied description. And staying there brought repulsion so strong that Sam started to shake.

A cave corridor, grown through by the insides of a gigantic creature, affected by a particularly nasty type of cancer. Each inhale resembled a gulp of warm, slimy liquid. His legs kept sinking into this mushy, chunky matter like into rotting tissue. Even the smell matched – decay, disease, decomposition, pus. Stones on the walls, covered in gelatinous fungi emitting pale light, the smooth surface interrupted by wide crevices gurgling with pink-gray tissue, pulsing irregularly. Full of boils and warty excrescences.

Sam looked back. He was subconsciously searching for a way back into the throne room, but the only thing he saw was still the same corridor and a turn few dozens paces away.

He suppressed the impulse to vomit with his next breath. And because he had no other option, he started walking.

He tried not to listen to the wet squelching resounding with each step.

 **xXx**

He lost the notion of time again. He didn´t know for how long he advanced through the sinuous corridor, strenuous and slow, the gooey and viscous under his legs clinging to his legs... until finally, he felt solid floor. And finally couldn´t smell the putrid stink in the air.

In this area, the place was starting to look...saner. The dark stone walls and moist heat remained, as if he was near a volcano, but the cancerous tissue slowly receded. The phosphorescent fungus thinned out, and torches took its place to illuminate the passage.

Sam stopped by the first one. Surprisingly, he wasn´t feeling tired, at least not too much, but he couldn´t think at all in that disturbing intestine tunnel.

 _Sum up the facts.  
_  
Not that he discovered much, but...

The Hell in this dimension was way more deranged than anything he encountered so far.

Not to mention it was undemoned and unpeopled; he didn´t meet any other damned souls. That was probably even more alarming.

The idea that it´s only him, Lucifer, and Hell right out of the unhinged mind of Lovecraft on LSD terrified him.

 _Why? Would I be happier if there was a demon hiding behind every corner and I kept passing by shrieking souls?_

Maybe... maybe because Lucifer´s words suddenly appeared on his mind, one of his endless provocations – and although Sam couldn´t remember when exactly he heard it, he could repeat it word for word: _w_ _hat is the twenty years here equalled not two moths up there, but... a thousand years? Two thousand?_

Maybe the war ended a long time ago. The Earth above is barren, Heaven dead. And he´s imprisoned here just with a completely mad archangel for all eons.

He shook his head, as if he could get rid of similar thoughts like that.

He started walking at a brisk pace again, the hard rock under his feet finally allowing him to do so.

 **xXx**

He was almost ashamed when he realized how relieved he felt when he heard cries and screams ahead of him after walking a few turns. He gripped the handle of the scimitar with both hands. Up until this point, it was loose in his hand, as if it was mere burden. He quickened his pace, the gloomy depression of the last minutes gone.

The road ahead of him split into three directions. Stairs up, stairs down and a straight way in the middle. He listened for a second and hen he started walking straight. The screeches of unbridled suffering sounded the loudest there.

The corridor stopped resembling a cave, now it looked like a medieval dungeon. There were more forks now and Sam also soon passed the first massive door with barred window. A rattle of chains later, a face was pressed to the opening, so twisted with despair and terror that Sam couldn´t tell whether the face belonged to a man or a woman.

"Hey!"

A wheezing voice.

"Help me! Please! Help me!"

It shouldn´t be easy to just walk by. And indeed it wasn´t. However, Sam didn´t have another option. A countless number of other cells lay ahead, some with similar door, some with irons bars instead of the front wall, and in each of them a miserable soul.

Longing for deliverance.

"I can´t," he whispered, "I´m sorry... I cant even help myself."

Even if he had the keys to each cell, even if he could afford to waste time by unlocking, nothing much would´ve changed. They´d all be still stuck in Hell.

"Swine!" the soul called behind his back. "You fucking cunt! No... please! Help me! I´m sorry..."

The voice was soon lost in a cacophony of others.

Sam suppressed the need to cover his ears. It wouldn´t help, not against noise this strong, and besides he needed to hold his weapon. He expected a demon to jump him any second.

Once more he was advancing slow, cautious. A non-participating observer might have said that Sam isn´t paying attention to the hands of the tortured souls, stretching out to him from behind the bars; he´s just avoiding them, not hearing their cries and pleas.

But he payed attention. And heard. All too well.

By one of the branches leading to a narrow staircase somewhere down, Sam flinched and froze. He had half a mind to shout at the prisoners around to shut up. Because the voice he briefly noticed coming from behind was a voice he would discern amongst thousands of others, if it wasn´t just a short scream.

And because he couldn´t hear it anymore, he had no other choice than to make sure with his own eyes.

He didn´t want to just call out into the darkness under the stairs and wait for an answer. He assumed it would only rile up the other imprisoned souls to make even more ruckus. Even like this it was only a question of time when all the pleas and curses attract the attention of someone or something... jailor, torturer. Demon.

 _Alright then_ , he pressed his lips together and shortly hesitated before setting foot on the first step, _I don´t have a clear goal in mind anyway, so why not make the exploration of this turn by goal for now._

As he walked lower and lower, the hot and heavy air noticeably cooled down, quicker than would be expected. When Sam was halfway down the staircase, he stopped hearing the screams from the dungeon above. He stopped and shook his head. When he turned, instead of the rectangle of light he expected to see, he found only seemingly infinite stairs leading up, fading into darkness.  
 _  
Okay. Fundamental laws of physics don´t work here. It should stop surprising me by now._

With a sigh he continued in his descent, scimitar ready to defend himself. Or attack. Literally anything could lie ahead.

And the voice he heard continued to replay in his mind.

Maybe it was only an illusion. His mind toying with him.

He hoped that would be the case.

Because the second option terrified him in a way no other infernal joyride could until this point.

The last step.

A humid, cold cell, divided in half by iron bars and doors with a massive lock. One torch, dying flame, dimness.

No enemy. The only one Sam saw in the room was the man behind the bars. Naked to the waist, hanging by his wrists in chains suspended from the ceilings, his bare toes barely reaching to the floor. His head was lowered, not moving, he appeared to be at least unconscious. Even in the dim light from the flickering torch, the nasty wounds and burns strewn over his entire body were unmistakeable.

A clatter. The scimitar fell out of Sam´s paralyzed hands. A moan escaped his lips, he bend forward slightly as if he caught a blow into the stomach.

Maybe it´s not him, you can´t see his face...

A feeble attempt at self-comfort. He didn´t need to see his face to recognize him.

"Dean!"

In two paces he was by the bars, shaking the doors, in vain.

"Dean," he barely recognized his own voice, so desperate, hoarse. "Not this... Dean!"

The man twitched, chains rattled. He lifted his head in a jerky movement. In that moment, the last of Sam´s benefit of doubt popped.

Although most of his face was covered in caked blood, his left eye was lost in dark purple swelling and his nose and mouth looked more like raw mincemeat than parts of human face, Sam couldn´t not know it was his brother. And the view hurt. More than self-contempt, more than self-hate.

"Sam," the broken lips whispered. "Hurray. Cavalry arrived."

"I... hang on, I´ll get you out of here," Sam mumbled without actually knowing what he was saying. He was caught in a horrible nightmare, nothing was making sense. Despite that he couldn´t stop, feverishly searching for something to break the lock, other than his weapon which would most likely break under the strain...

A strange sound was bouncing off the stone walls, coming from Dean´s cell. At first it sounded like crying and Sam only then realized: Dean was laughing. Bitterly, it was obvious it´s hurting him, but laughing.

It was almost worse than if he started crying.

"You... fucking dumbass," he rasped when Sam straightened up, having made the decision of sacrificing the scimitar, and turned to Dean. "You still haven´t realized? Nobody... you can´t get anyone out of here, dammit!"

"I know... I know this is my mistake," Sam shook his head, "but I´m trying... I have to try to fix it. If I get you out of there, maybe-"

"What?!" Dean howled, his voice suddenly stronger. Probably anger fueling him. "Maybe what, Sammy? Ha? We´ll dance out of fucking Hell hand in hand?" He spat out blood. "And even if... what then? Everything´s gone."

"I... I left you a message. About Jack. You shouldn´t have come here."

"Yeah, because you´re all fine and dandy, sure," he again sounded tired, hoarse. "If you really didn´t want..." he was stopped by a coughing fit, it looked like he cannot get enough air. When the fit finally subsided, he focused his only functioning eye on his brother, flames glinted in his gaze. "If you really didn´t want me coming for you, you wouldn´t leave me the fucking instructions. So don´t lie to yourself."

Sam clenched his teeth. Without a word, he shoved the scimitar´s blade into the space between the door the bars. He started to pry it open carefully at first, then with more strength.

"By the way," Dean spoke up, "when I said that everything´s gone... I meant really fucking everything."

Sam didn´t respond, but stopped testing the endurance of the steel for a moment.

"All of them... everyone to whom you as much as said hello. Dead." And Dean sneered again, this time it resembled a sob a lot more. "So how about you just piss off and leave me alone?"

Instead of answering, Sam heaved one last time. The heavy door creaked, a moment of hope. But aside from the sound, the iron grilling didn´t give away and he felt that if he doesn´t stop putting pressure on the blade, it´s going to break. At the moment, "remaining armed" posed no particular priority, but instincts and deep-rooted habits were stronger than the feeling of utter ruination. He slowly pulled the scimitar out of the slit, metal ringing against metal. Then he let the blade fall out of his hand collapsed to the floor next to it. With his back against the iron, he rested his head in his palms.

His mind was empty. No idea what next. And nothing he could tell Dean to justify his actions.

"Who?" he asked in a dull, distant voice.

"That... Jack of yours." Dean spat out behind his back. "And if you´re asking about the victims... you name it. Dead. You understand?"

A moment of silence. And then rattle of chains.

"Go away, Sam," his voice was gradually growing weaker, "just get out and leave me be."

"Dean..."

"Still... still the same. You set off a fucking firework on the hay shed, then run around the fire site, crying and pouring water on the cold ash."

 _I didn´t want..._

 _I didn´t know..._

 _I didn´t plan..._

Just the beginnings of pathetic excuses. Nothing else came to Sam. He pressed the palms against his close eyes with such force it hurt. An explosion of bright stars.

"You want to get away from Hell?" Dean continued with the voice of a dying man, yet stubborn and merciless. "Then run. Even if you deserve to be here. We both do."

"No..." just a whimper, unsure and even weaker than his older brother´s voice.

Dean scoffed. Chains rattled again. When he spoke again, his voice was ice cold, serious. "I won´t argue with you, Sam. I don´t want to talk to you. I don´t want to see you ever again... not, while... I guess the demon won´t care. And now get the fuck out of here."

 _I won´t leave you_ , Sam thought.

He couldn´t say it out loud.

"Or just sit here. The bastard will be back any moment to do me in."

"You want me to go away because..." Sam begun quietly, but again couldn´t finish his sentence – because you want to protect me?"

"Because I hate you," Dean said. "I loathe you. Despise you. More than any other damn demon in this circus. When will you get it through your thick skull?"

 _Don´t listen to him. Wait for his jailor to come back. Try your damn sword on him. Take his keys, free Dean no matter what he says, no matter if it´s painful truth._

Sam lifted his head. The torch still gave you the same dim light, but it stabbed him in the eyes nonetheless.

 _And then what? Did you even listen what Dean told you? Even_ _if his attempt at rescue wasn´t doomed from the start, for who would you do it?  
_  
"For us," he whispered without realizing it´s not just another passing thought. "Together... we´ll come up with something..."

And Dean answered him as if he heard even what was only going through Sam´s head: "Hey! Do you listen with your knees? Leave me out of it! Stop using me as an excuse, dammit!"

He doesn´t mean it, Sam thought. With a tenacious expression he stood up, the scimitar clutched firmly in his hands.

"I damn well mean it," Dean got out before he started hacking again. This time, the fit ended in a groan, followed by silence.

"Dean?" Sam turned around with worry – of course, dying here was only temporary, but he didn´t know if his brother´s soul would remain in place...

His bare feet searched for solid floor, to no avail. His head, bowed down, rose slightly. For mere five words. Dean got each of them out separately, with immense effort but with acute insistence: "Get... out... of... my... sight..."

And the coughing again, whooping and unstoppable. It shook his entire body and Sam wouldn´t tell what hurt more: the pure hatred in his brother´s words or the sight of his suffering.

The torch on the wall crackled, the flame wobbled.

In the moment when Dean stopped moving, a few sparks flew out; a sizzle, and the whole cell fell into darkness and silence.

 **xXx**

He´s dead.

 _Maybe... maybe he wasn´t really here, maybe he was just another damn illusion to torture me._

 _What happens now?  
_  
He turned around in the darkness, feeling around himself with his left hand, his right still clutching his weapon. He touched the bars, the damp, cold wall. At least he was still in the same place. He´ll probably have to find the staircase and...

Continue searching without even knowing what he´s searching for? Abandon Dean without being able to hope he will find him again?

Before he could reach a decision, circumstances reached it for him. There was a sound similar to a loud exhale and the torch flared up again, with a bright and strong flame this time.

Sam blinked, for a moment, before his eyes got used to the new light. He turned and looked into his brother´s eyes. Both of them. Clear, alive, and seething.

"Into what lengths does a person need to go to get rid of you?"

 _He´s dead serious. He isn´t pretending hate to protect me._

Only now Sam could truly believe it.

One doubt remained: whether all this was real or just another of Hell´s traps. Actually, not even this, not even Dean´s hate mattered.

He won´t leave him here. Be it real or illusory Dean, no matter how much he hates Sam.

"I won´t leave you here," he says with a clear voice.

His brother´s face is twisted by derisive sneer. It looked like he wants to shrug his shoulders, but he remained suspended in chains in a way that didn´t allow for such movement. In the end, he just lightly shook his head and pointed his gaze to the staircase behind Sam´s back.

"I don´t care what you think of me, Dean."

No answer.

"And I don´t care that we have no chance. That has never stopped us before and now... now it won´t happen either."

Without looking at him, Dean gave out a short laugh. "A heartfelt speech, check. Twaddling, that´s your thing."

Sam only jerked his head.

Out of the corner of his eyes, Sam noticed a chance, something unsettling. He turned. The stairs up were already dark before, but now it looked like the shadows were deepened, like darkness itself was flowing down.

And then the pounding of heavy steps. Slow. Mighty.

"Well, it´s not exactly a cup of tea with this fucker," Dean spoke, "but I have to tell you, that right now I prefer him to you, Sam."

 _Don´t mind him. Don´t think about how much you deserve it, don´t think about crime and punishment. Focus on what´s coming..._

The cell didn´t provide many places to hide, so after a short consideration, Sam pressed his back to a wall right next to the staircase. The heavy steps were almost there and their owner at least won´t see him right away.

He quickly glanced at Dean – his eyes were now pointed to the ground, and although he was probably trying to keep his cool with everything he had, Sam knew him well enough to discern fear even in his partially hidden face.

Something clenched in his chest – for which time, after coming here? - but forced himself to shift his attention away from his brother.

A shadow, black like spilled ink crept on the floor of the cell and against all laws of physics slithered all the way to Dean´s feet, irrespective of the torch light.

The steps stopped.

Sniffing.

"Saif al-Altahar," someone said in a deep, guttural voice. "Who came to visit you with the Sword of Purity, boy?"

Sam held his breath. A moment between two heartbeats; anxiety, tension, anticipation.

In the next moment Dean tensed and twisted in his chains as if he was gripped by a gigantic invisible hand. Before he started screaming, Sam thought he heard cracking of bones and tendons.

He jumped out of hiding without hesitating another second and cut forward at the same time as he tried to mentally process the appearance of the demon in front of him.

A deformed, twisted and knotty mass of muscle. He resembled a human only distantly. Two legs, two hands, the right one lifted in Dean´s direction, crushing him, two eyes like ink drops. He was spreading an aura of terror and filth, like Sam remembered Jack did.

He dodged the swishing blade only partly, there was a deep gash on his torso now. However, it looked like the demon barely noticed it.

The already distorted face was warped even further by a smile.

Sam managed to swing back the blade in preparation for another strike. Didn´t have time to land it. He was flying through the air in the opposite direction of the scimitar. While the weapon let out a jangling sound upon falling on rock, Sam hit the iron bars and slid down to the ground with just a silent gasp and thud.

A fleeting though: _why do I only feel correct if demon and angel fling me around like a rag doll?_

Instead of an answer, he got Dean´s pained screams.

The demon´s voice was drowning out everything else: "However could you be worthy of such weapon?"

What Sam felt wasn´t despair anymore.

It was emptiness. Infinite emptiness.

Behind his back, Dean let out a wheezing moan, before growing silent.

"And how could you be worthy of such brother?" the demon continued.

He flicked his wrist and last, heart-rending scream stabbed into Sam´s ears. At the same time, the torch´s flame wavered and went out, like blowing out a candle.

Touch of ice told talons in the dark. Sam didn´t resist. Not even when they started to tear him into pieces.

At least it didn´t take long.

 **xXx**

He lifted his head up from the familiar, cool throne room floor. Lucifer was looking down on him with the same sadly indignant expression of a person whose pet just peed on their shoes.

Even if in a certain regard, Sam felt even worse than after his last return from the Circle – horribly empty and useless – he rose almost immediately from the ground.

"You won," he blurted out before the archangel could begin with his usual venom. "Alright? I´ll do whatever you want. Just... under one condition: you´ll let Dean go!"

He thought he could determine from Lucifer´s answer, whether it was really his brother down in the dungeon, dying over and over, or if he was duped by another hellish trick.

"Aren´t you a bit over your head?" Lucifer sized him up and down with a slightly amused stare. "You steal a piece from my collection, run around Hell with it like the Prince of Persia even though you got an explicit order to stay here and you want to dictate the conditions?"

He stepped closer and Sam unconsciously stepped back. He frowned defiantly and forced himself to stay in place even in the moment Lucifer broke through his comfort zone and moved his face close to Sam´s, like when a drill officer bullies a greenhorn in training.

"You set it up that way," he said silently. He wanted to continue, repeat his first question, find the truth, but the archangel gripped him by the collar of his shirt, unpretending rage flashing in his eyes. "Me? Me, Samuel? Which of the words sit, stay and wait means get out of here and fall for the first damn trap you encounter to you?"

 _So it was an illusion,_ Sam mentally breathed a sigh of relief, even though Lucifer slammed him against a wall with his last word.

"No," the archangel proclaimed and stepped away from him. "It was about what you fear the most. And rightfully so. You weren´t worried for your brother, my friend, you were afraid he will spurn you. And don´t be deceived, if he gets here, that´s exactly what he will do."

 _It wasn´t real. That´s what matter_ _s_ _._

"If you think so," Lucifer shrugged. "Either way... You´re not big to make claims for Saif al-Altahar and idling around Hell. So you understand my dilemma?"

Without waiting for a response, he turned his back to Sam and continued while stroking his chin in a parody of great philosopher: "I can´t dedicate enough time to you Sammy, you know, war. On the other hand, I thought you might have some disobeying inclinations, the Winchesters are this kind of breed, aren´t they."

He turned on his heel and pointed his index finger at Sam.

"So we´ll move onto the back-up plan," he stated and smiled brightly. "You get... a demon for babysitting! You´re welcome."

He clapped his hands.

Sam couldn´t help himself when he was watching the doors to the room opening, his breath caught up in his throat.

Rightfully.

Just a shadow at first, again defying the laws of physics. Sam had to quench the urge to close his eyes. To not see. He suspected that no matter which monstrosity appears, Lucifer took great care to chose something specially tailored exactly to his weak spots.

And he wasn´t wrong.

The figure that appeared before him retained a fully human appearance, unlike the demon down in the dungeon.

All the worse.

 _Not this... please...  
_  
"I think that you are old friends at least from one side, right, Sammy," Lucifer´s wry voice was coming to him from a great distance. "I hope you will properly appreciate this and perhaps finally thank me for everything I´m doing for you."

But the only thing Sam could do right now was to silently sway on the edge of what he would still handle...

 **xXx**

 **Guys I am so incredibly sorry sorry sorry but this is as far as the original author wrote the story. When I started translating I honestly had no idea but then I had no choice other than to continue the already started thing even when I discovered it´s not finished. BUT! When I picked it up for translation, she considered continuing. I want it as much as you do and you support will help.**

 **If you liked this story and feel disappointed now, the best I can do to console you is to point you at the sister of this fic on my profile – As I Lay Dying. It describes what Dean´s been doing meanwhile. It´s a Destiel oneshot, also bloody and gory, more on the physical side than this one.** ****

 **In other news, a thing from my personal life. As I´m soon moving to Canada from Europe, today was the last day I saw a dear friend for a long time. Before we parted she gave me an envelope. I opened it at home and spent a long time crying on the couch after I read it. This girl is one of the most awkward people I´ve ever met and she gave me a letter so full of honest appreciation for all my patience that it just about short-circuited all of my emotional wiring. This is just a random message to you all who are still reading. Don´t give up on the nerd people around you whom no-one else understand. They appreciate it.**


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